


Wild thing, you make my heart sing!

by RosadelValle



Series: Heart of darkness [10]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Baroque Music, Drug Use, F/M, Firenze - Freeform, Hannibal in Florence, Hannibal is horny, Harassment, Heartbreak, M/M, References to Depression, Social Commentary, The Monster of Florence, Violence, Walther P38, bedelia isn't very nice, but it's just very functional to the story, but very mild, cia dirty ops, don't come at me, more to come! stay stuned!, references to italian history and politics, references to italian literature, references to mental illnesses, student protest movement, there will be, tsantsa, with links!, young!Hannibal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:33:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 4,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26939674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosadelValle/pseuds/RosadelValle
Summary: Before Will, there was Lorenzo.How Hannibal discovered he had a great capacity to love and a talent for death.
Relationships: Bedelia Du Maurier/Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal Lecter/Original Male Character(s), Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Series: Heart of darkness [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1357984
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	1. Via del Corno

Bedelia thought that Via del Corno looked exactly like foreign people imagine italian streets would look: narrow, cobbled, old yellow walls dotted with rectangular windows with wooden shutters. Atmospheric but really nothing much, especially in Florence. Yet, Hannibal seemed to be mesmerized by the place.  It was one of those terse nights that follow a rainy day and the air was crispy, the cobblestones under her elegant boots shone like pietra dura and the general melancholy of the whole ensemble threatened to dissolve in tears the lump in her throat.

_ ‘Hannibal…on nights like these I tend to get sentimental. Be kind and save me from this fate. Get sentimental in my place and tell me what’s tying you to this street.’ _

_ ‘Someone wrote a book about this street. It had a sentimental title too: Tales of poor lovers.’ _

_ ‘Was it good?’ _

_ ‘I didn’t like it. I couldn’t understand it back then. I thought that being a poor lover was beneath me. In a way, I was wrong.’ _

_ ‘Will.’ _

_ ‘Not back then. Someone else. I met him here and it was the fault of that sad, miserable book.’ _

_ ‘Will you meet him again, now that you’re back?’ _

_ ‘No. He… died a long ago. And not by my hand, my dear.’ _

They stood in comfortable silence for a couple of minutes, surrounded by the sweet sadness that follows the memory of a long lost love. Bedelia wondered if Hannibal had become the Monster, il Mostro, because of that love or despite it. 

_ ‘If you can handle feeling a little sentimental, Bedelia, you can listen to the rest of the story at home. I don’t feel like telling it here. I fear even ghosts may come out, on nights like these.’ _


	2. Arcadia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘A psychopath?’
> 
> ‘Not really. More like a person of above average intellect, with some sociopathic tendencies compounded by the worst possible upbringing for someone like that: aristocratic parents that mixed traditional values, family and carelessness with too much ease’.

_ ‘Can you guess what I did the day I arrived in Florence? I left my things in my room and immediately took a train to Siena. I went there to attend a recital of Baroque music.The sun was setting when i arrived and the city was bathed in a pink light. Siena will always be the city of soft colors, for me. I still remember the opening song: Augellin che’l tuo amor. It was all deliciously clichè.  _ _ That’s how I lived those first months, indulging in this romantic, cultured fantasy.  _ _ My college friends and I lived a perfectly Arcadic life, alternating between lessons and sitting on the grass in Santa Maria Novella.’ _

_ ‘I would have never imagined you like that and yet, at the same time, i can picture it perfectly.’ _

_ ‘But there’s always a serpent in the garden of Eden, if you allow me one more clichè. I fear you will find many in my little story… that’s what love stories seem to be made of. It really bothers me to admit to not be able to escape it.’ _

_ ‘Tell me about your snake, Hannibal. I’m ready to forgive sloppines if the story is worth it.’ _

_ ‘Oh, it wasn’t a fascinating snake. It was just politics. It was 1967 and there was a political storm brewing over our heads, riots and all that. I’m an artistic animal, not a political one though. I already had too many personal issues to fight for and I really didn’t care about changing a world that cannot be changed. And the vast majority of people don’t deserve me to fight for them. Most of my friends weren’t of the same opinion. There was this girl, in particular… the girlfriend of another student. A literature student and a pretty annoying radical intellectual, she organized reading groups to discuss books in a perspective of class struggle’. _

_ ‘And, i bet, she wanted to discuss that book about ill-fated lovers, maybe sitting in the exact street where it was set’. _

_ ‘Precisely. Smart girl, Bedelia. And that’s where I saw him for the first time. Lorenzo. Lorenzo il Magnifico.’ _

_ ‘Did he look like Will?’ _

_ ‘Quite the contrary. Will is beautiful, Lorenzo was handsome. He was taller than Will, more elegant, well-built. A greek statue, if we wanna use just another clichè. And the exact opposite of an empath.’ _

_ ‘A psychopath?’ _

_ ‘Not really. More like a person of above average intellect, with some sociopathic tendencies compounded by the worst possible upbringing for someone like that: aristocratic parents that mixed traditional values, family and carelessness with too much ease’. _

_ ‘And he studied literature?’ _

_ ‘So he said, but I knew right away that he was lying through his teeth… but i’ll tell you tomorrow what he was. Goodnight Bedelia, don’t dream about the past.’ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to Augellin che'l tuo amor here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sZCSObL4oU&lc=Ugjx091a-oUwhHgCoAEC


	3. Orbicularis muscle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘A genuine smile involves the Orbicularis muscle’s flexion. It’s an involuntary movement and it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make it on purpose’.

_ ‘I have a textbook question for you, Bedelia. What distinguishes a simulated smile from a genuine one?’ _

Hannibal’s voice distracted her from her gloomy contemplations: she wasn’t enjoying their visit to Pisa. She found it underwhelming and uncomfortably crowded. The tourists behaved differently than in Florence, it reminded her of those family hordes one could find at Disneyland.

_ ‘A genuine smile involves the Orbicularis muscle’s flexion. It’s an involuntary movement and it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make it on purpose’. _

_ ‘Lorenzo could, that’s the first thing I noticed about him. He was the most handsome young man I had ever seen and he gave us this beautiful, monstrous smile. It was all wrong, Bedelia. The most perfect imitation of a human emotion i’ve ever seen to this day…uncanny would be to word. The second thing I noticed about him was how his every single move screamed ‘soldier’. He was sitting there with us, discussing competently about literature with the girls, but all i could think was: ‘This man is not a student’. I was..intrigued.’ _

Hannibal smiled absentmindedly, apparently studying the Leaning Tower. To a stranger’s eye he looked like the portrait of relaxation but Bedelia knew better: that was the grin of a hunter who remembers the first time he handled a rifle.

_ ‘Why did he make you think about a soldier?’ _

_ ‘You have to understand that being a literature student in 1967, being a student in general, was a unique experience. _ _ Those were the  _ _ years of the _ _ student  _ _ protest _ _ movement and all those boys and girls dreamed about was a revolution. It was just a bunch of kids with a lot of dreams and hopes and no practical sense, at least for the most part. Many came from middle class families, from small towns, from safe and suffocating realities. Finally far from mom and dad, they just...basked in freedom. University was like a fantastic limbo in which they could… fluctuate around. Lorenzo wasn’t like that, not at all. He did everything with purpose, he was in control. The others dreamed, he acted. He gave me the impression of someone who’s following a map. I would learn later that it wasn’t just an impression’. _

On the way back to Florence, Hannibal didn’t talk and Bedelia couldn’t understand if he was sad or just very focused on his memories. Once again, she knew better than to ask.


	4. Rewind.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘No one is going to arrest me, Lecter. Come home with me.’

Summer 1967

A club in Florence

  
  


The club is crowded, smoke-filled and poorly lit: it could be any club in the world. The girl dressed in blue is almost perfect and too many men are staring hungrily at her - the only naked woman they’ve seen is their girlfriend and she doesn’t have those otherworldly harmonious proportions. The sturdy young man sitting at the counter is far from perfect and you can read in his exaggeratedly high cheekbones, small eyes and childlike round jaw that he has bad genes. He’s the one who’s looking at her harder. Lorenzo is staring at him. Hannibal is staring at Lorenzo.

On this particular evening, his amiable student of literature mask seems to be slipping. He’s quiet, gloomy and very probably high on coke. The fact that no one except Hannibal has noticed is yet another proof of his extraordinary self-control. 

To this day, Hannibal still doesn’t know if what came next was a failure of said control or the result of a deliberate gesture.

The sturdy young man approaches the almost perfect girl, grabs her by the waist and tries to drag her on the dancefloor. She fights back and her friends push him away, they head to the door and he follows. Lorenzo quickly stands up and goes to him:

_ ‘The fuck you want?’ _

_ ‘A man like you shouldn’t go after a woman like that. A man like you should know his place: the pigsty. When people like you forget who they are, i get so fucking mad, you cannot imagine how fucking mad it makes me!’ _

The sturdy guy tries to take a swing at Lorenzo but he ducks, grabs his arm and throws him on the ground. A quick, professional move. There’s no need to keep punching him in the face but Lorenzo keeps going until his hands are covered in blood. There’s no need to stop him either: he gets up and leaves before anyone can intervene. He walks out of the now silent club staggering just a little bit. Hannibal follows him.

_ ‘Yes, Lecter?’ _

_ ‘You’re not a student. A student doesn’t fight like that.’ _

_ ‘And how would you know that?’ _

_ ‘They’ll call the police. They’ll arrest you.’ _

_ ‘No one is going to arrest me, Lecter. Come home with me.’ _

He does.


	5. Rewind #2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lorenzo is fast asleep and doesn’t even flinch when he leaves the bed. Hannibal just wanders aimlessly around the rooms, taking in every detail: literature books and papers scattered over a small desk, boxes of pasta and tomato sauce in the kitchen, used razors in the bathroom, the obligatory full ashtray in the living room…

Hannibal wakes up at dawn in Lorenzo’s silent flat. The building is in a quiet, residential area and the only noise he can hear is the sporadic roar of a distant passing car. It’s a gloomy winter morning and the room is still immersed in the dark: he should really try to go back to sleep but he can’t. He’s… uncomfortable. He has this irrational feeling that the apartment is rejecting him, pushing him away. 

Lorenzo is fast asleep and doesn’t even flinch when he leaves the bed. Hannibal just wanders aimlessly around the rooms, taking in every detail: literature books and papers scattered over a small desk, boxes of pasta and tomato sauce in the kitchen, used razors in the bathroom, the obligatory full ashtray in the living room… There’s everything you would expect to find in the living space of a student and yet, there’s nothing that suggests that someone is actually living there. It’s clean in a way a hotel room would be and there are no dying plants, no pictures, no abandoned glasses anywhere. It’s like a giant theater prop: the student’s house. 

The only personal touches in the flat are Lorenzo’s camera and the few clothes in the closet. The camera is a Zeiss, an expensive model and not exactly the piece of junk that a normal student would carry around the way Lorenzo does. The wardrobe consiste in a couple of sweaters, four shirts and a leather jacket. But the sweaters are made of cashmere and the shirts are tailor-made, high quality. When Hannibal checks the leather jacket he finds a gun in the internal pocket: a Walther P38, loaded.

He goes back to bed.

The next day he goes to class only to find Maurizio in tears. There’s nothing special in Maurizio except for his radical girlfriend, the one who organised the little literary meetings where he met Lorenzo. 

_ ‘Francesca is gone, gone. She left! She went back home, to Bologna. Oh god, what the fuck… Hannibal, I think she lost her mind. She said that she was being followed, monitored… that people kept breaking into her room and going through her stuff. Just a few days ago she made me run from a restaurant because she was convinced that someone was taking pictures of us!’ _

_ ‘That’s… unfortunate. She’s probably losing her mind, as you say. Many mental illness symptoms appear at this age, typically. It’s better to let her go home and rest’. _

Lorenzo’s Zeiss pops in his mind.

_ ‘I’m fairly sure no one was following her’. _


	6. Tsantsa.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal doesn’t like Rome. The city is like the most beautiful woman of the party and he’s the only guest who doesn’t wanna fuck her. Rome has many souls and the sound they make when they clash is a discordant note that makes his ears ring. He can feel the voices of the martyrs calling to him from the Catacombs mixed up with the babbling of the tourists and the traffic noises.

The siren and the flashlight of the ambulance disrupted the cheerful calmness of the Croisette, breaking through the waves of tourists and locals that were enjoying their evening by the sea. It stopped right near the restaurant where Hannibal and Bedelia were dining and they could see the paramedics hurrying toward a beach bar. Their waiter, who seemed to be mesmerized by the tanned and white dressed Bedelia, tried to reassure them:

_ ‘Just a boy who took something too strong or too much of something… but they revived him. You know how students on vacation are, that’s the perfect age to make stupid mistakes!’. _

Bedelia didn’t really know how students on vacations were though, her college days had been quite conventional and she never made mistakes. She wasn’t the type to and her college buddies were too sheltered anyway. Prestigious schools, unlike in movies, are usually functional but boring places. The one thing she could make out of the fog of bland memories was the face of Susanna Clairmont, the only student in her college to ever die of an overdose. Susanna was smart, beautiful and depressed like every self-respecting heroine (what a terrible pun) and her downfall was caused by brooding young man whose name she never made and who used to buy doses for her. Bedelia didn’t like to think about her college days. Hannibal, on the contrary, seemed to be lost in some pleasant memory and was smiling contently at the redfish in his plate. The fact that Lorenzo was often high came to her mind.

_ ‘Hannibal, are you thinking about some pleasant mistake you made as a student on vacation?’ _

_ ‘Yes… I acted like a fool a couple of times. But I was young, angry and bursting with so much energy.. i was bound to make some mistakes.’ _

_ ‘You don’t look too sorry. What ever did you do?’ _

* * *

  
  
  


Hannibal doesn’t like Rome. The city is like the most beautiful woman of the party and he’s the only guest who doesn’t wanna fuck her. Rome has many souls and the sound they make when they clash is a discordant note that makes his ears ring. He can feel the voices of the martyrs calling to him from the Catacombs mixed up with the babbling of the tourists and the traffic noises. Sitting on the Trinità dei Monti stairway, he waits for Lorenzo feeling unpleasantly anxious and charged (‘ _ I have to talk with someone, it won’t take long. Come with me Lecter, i don’t want to make the trip alone’. _ )

A middle-aged british couple sits a couple of steps under him, puffing and giggling. They’re wearing practical but elegant clothes and seem to be upper-middle-class. The husband starts reading from a book that talks about a dandy who lives near Trinità dei Monti and waits for his woman in his refined mansion*. Hannibal reluctantly identifies with the character. 

Lorenzo is back soon, as promised. He looks bored. Whoever he had to talk to, probably didn’t even have any exciting news to give him. They sit in silence for a while, smoking and resting.

_ ‘Listen, Lecter. I saw an antique store on the way here, I went in to look around and saw something that I really wanted to but it was too expensive’. _

_ ‘What?’ _

_ ‘A Shuar Tsantsa, a ceremonial human trophy’.  _

_ ‘Why would you want that?’ _

_ ‘Why not? Listen… let’s just go back and rob the place. I have guns, Lecter.’ _

* * *

  
  
  


Robbing a shop is very easy when you’re young, determined and armed. The antique dealer is a burly but terrified man who doesn’t really attempt to resist, and keeps telling them to take whatever they want and go. Lorenzo grabs his Tsantsa and unceremoniously shoves it into his backpack, which makes Hannibal laugh. He laughs and laughs, he can’t stop laughing. They start behaving like kids in a candy shop, picking up trinkets and jewelry and shoving it in their pockets, giggling hysterically all the time.

All that cheerfulness must be too much for the owner, who starts to look less scared and more angry. He lurches forward but Hannibal intercepts him and slams him on the ground: Chiyo’s teachings are truly priceless. Lorenzo kicks the man in the face a few times, well placed hits that knock the man out for a little while. A few seconds that are enough to allow them to escape.

The trip back to Firenze is uneventful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Il Piacere, Gabriele D'Annunzio


	7. La fuggevol ora.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lorenzo leads impeccably but Hannibal can’t help but notice the manic glint buried deep in his eyes.

Fall 1967, somewhere in Northern Italy

  
  


Everything is soaked in fog, liberty villas and orange street lamps appear and disappear in cotton-wool waves. The man who will go down in history as the Chesapeake Ripper basks in the gloomy beauty outside the car window. He will live in a place like this one day but, for now, he’s just sitting in the driver’s seat of a car parked in the dark; Lorenzo is, quite literally, riding shotgun with the P38 in his lap.  Their target emerges from the mist and passes by without noticing them, Lorenzo steps quickly out of the car and shoots the man in the legs.  When he jumps back in, Hannibal starts the car and does his best to get the fuck out of there as soon as possible. He only stops two hours later, when Lorenzo asks him to.

  
  


_ ‘Who was that man?’ _

_ ‘A journalist.’ _

_ ‘Why did we drive four hours to shoot a journalist?’ _

_ ‘We didn’t shoot anyone. I shot him. You drove.’ _

_ ‘Don’t fuck with me, Lorenzo.’ _

_ ‘That man is a traitor. He’s a mediocre journalist and an even worse writer. You may not have noticed it Hannibal, but failed writers are a sick kind: they dump hatred and frustration on their students. They’re breeding a generation of gullible, acrimonious little intellectuals.’ _

_ ‘Like Francesca, i guess.’ _

_ ‘Exactly like her. I knew you would understand. I have a design, Lecter. I want a world that follows a certain order, the natural order that we have followed for centuries. A clean world. This is my design.’ _

_ ‘This is your design.’ _

_ ‘Yes! Now dance with me! Come on!’ _

  
The parking lot is surrounded by trees and, in the middle of the night, completely empty. The stereo plays  _ Libiamo ne’lieti calici _ and they waltz and waltz and waltz on the cold pavement. Lorenzo leads impeccably but Hannibal can’t help but notice the manic glint buried deep in his eyes. They’re dancing toward catastrophe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Libiamo ne'lieti calici' is the iconc waltz from La Traviata, quite possibly the most famous italian opera ever.


	8. We could live like this forever.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before he falls asleep with his clothes still on, his last conscious thought is:we could live like this forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ideal soundtrack for the chapter: I miss you, Blink 182.

The main problem with Hannibal’s habit of dragging her around Italy to share bits of his past affairs, was that it was incredibly boring and disappointing. Bedelia used to fantasize a lot about Hannibal’s first love and her daydreams invariably involved younger and innocent clones of Will or Alana, the delicious taste of the loss of innocence being the main theme of her made up stories. But this Lorenzo was simply uninteresting. Bedelia had to admit that the man was exceptionally good looking, so much indeed that her fingertips tingled when Hannibal showed her his picture, but there wasn’t much beside that.

Delusions of grandeur, exaggerated belief of self-worth and identity, mildly antisocial traits, violent tendencies, higher than average IQ: psychiatrists usually see dozens of Lorenzo in their career and patients like that have excellent possibilities to become violent felons unless they find a productive outlet for their anger. Hannibal’s darling seemed to have found his way in joining the army. Or maybe the police force, who knows. From what she gathered, he could have been an undercover cop, an intelligence officer or even a spec ops. 

Whatever it was, she couldn’t understand why Hannibal had been so mesmerised by that guy and more importantly, she didn’t care anymore. 

Sitting on a stone bench, he seemed to be completely oblivious to her bad mood. The clearing was silent except for the sound of the wind and the cooing of the pigeons nested under the roof of the little medieval church. The forest was quiet too: it wasn’t a touristic spot and they didn’t meet other hikers throughout the morning. A kind old man at the gas station had explained to Bedelia that most of the towns in that area had been abandoned during the war and not many people had bothered to come back. 

It was the ideal place to hide a body and she just knew that Hannibal was immersed in some memory of murder.

* * *

  
  
  


Winter 1967, in that same clearing

  
  


The ground isn’t frozen yet and they can dig a decently sized hole without too much effort. Which is good because carrying the body up there has been difficult enough: the guy didn’t look as heavy as he felt. They throw the body in and try to cover it as best as they can. 

The mood is somber as they work in silence: Hannibal never really imagined what their first killing would look like, but it wouldn’t have looked like this if he did. Lorenzo was just mad because the victim wasn’t supposed to die. 

The plan was easy enough and basically a repetition of the previous ambush: wait for the guy in the dark, shoot him in the legs and then run. Except that, this time, the target was expecting it and shot them first. Hannibal’s reaction was to hit the gas and run him over. Which was effective at stopping the enemy but left them with a huge and mangled problem to solve. A problem that Lorenzo, after a quick phone call, decided to bury in that secluded clearing.

They’re still silent on the way back but, this time, it’s a tired and relaxed silence. Lorenzo doesn’t take the road to Florence but heads toward his real home: a small house in a village in the country. Before he falls asleep with his clothes still on, his last conscious thought is: _we could live like this forever._


	9. But what does Lorenzo think about all of this?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lorenzo has a voice too.

Tomorrow I'm going to Colonel A. and I'm going to tell him:  _ ‘I can’t do this anymore. This operation has been a failure just as i told it would, it ends here. Take me out. Take me out or we’ll have another casualty: me. I’ll kill myself. I’ll fucking do it _ .’ 

I hate it here. I hate it here. I hate it here. I hate it here.

It’s just… i’m 33. I can’t pass for a student anymore, it’s a superhuman effort and it’s not worth it. I can’t do this kind of covert ops anymore. I don’t want to. It’s time to change epaulettes. I deserve a promotion. 

The robbery was a stupid idea but i still deserve a promotion. I have to burn the tsantsa. I have to quit coke. What was I thinking anyway? Maybe I don't deserve a promotion right away but I deserve to work with the Colonel. If he agrees, but he will. I’m their best man. 

This operation failed but i predicted everything and it’s not like they can blame me. Besides, I didn't have any support and I told them I needed at least another man.

I hate students. I hate this house. I want to go home.

I should have fucked that girl at the club. I should marry the Colonel’s daughter.

_ Lorenzo. _

That flat is horrible but this house is maybe even worse. It’s so depressing, old people’s houses are always depressing. I’m tired of Tuscany. I’m tired of students, I'm tired of literature.

_ Lorenzo! _

I’m tired, I need a vacation, A vacation and a promotion. I want to take a trip to Portugal. I miss my clothes.

_ LORENZO!! _

Ah, shit. That guy Hannibal is still here.


	10. Shattered tea cups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a couple of minutes, the only sound that can be heard in the room is the echo of the birds chirping in the garden. When Lorenzo finally speaks again, he looks and sounds so tired that Hannibal almost feels unreasonably guilty.

_ “LORENZO!” _

Lorenzo flinches at the sound of Hannibal’s voice like someone who’s been awoken from a very intense dream by the sound of a siren.

_ “Yes?” _

_ “We should talk about yesterday”. _

_ “Ah, well… There’s not much to say. Forget about it… It was… badly executed”. _

Lorenzo’s voice sounds so empty and vague that Hannibal considers giving up for a minute. But there will never be a better moment to talk about them, about their future: they killed a man together and there’s no going back from something like that.

_ “It could be well executed next time. We’ll improve, we’ll make it beautiful.” _

_ “Next time? There won’t be a next time, Hannibal. What the fuck are you talking about?” _

_ “You know very well what i’m talking about. Your design… it can’t be done without death. I’ll guide you through it. We’ll get through it all together.” _

_ “Hannibal, i.. i don’t think that you really understand what kind of design I have in mind. However, I understand perfectly what you have in mind and it repulses me. You can’t make it beautiful, whatever that means. Killing isn’t beautiful, Lecter. It’s gross. It’s brutal. It’s the last resort and I'd rather not do it.” _

_ “EVERYTHING YOU DID IN THE LAST MONTHS WAS BRUTAL! YOUR DESIGN IS BRUTAL! LORENZO, YOU FUCKING COWARD! YOU PLAY GOD, YOU WANT YOUR LITTLE PERFECT ORDER… BUT YOU CAN’T PLAY GOD WITHOUT KILLING HUMANS!” _

For a couple of minutes, the only sound that can be heard in the room is the echo of the birds chirping in the garden. When Lorenzo finally speaks again, he looks and sounds so tired that Hannibal almost feels unreasonably guilty.

_ “You, Hannibal, are the exact kind of liability that I was trained to identify and avoid. You’re a dreamer but your dreams are so fundamentally wrong that i… i don’t even know what to say. I should report you to the authorities but I won't. What i’m going to do now is to leave this place and disappear from your life.” _

_ “Think about what you’re throwing away. Walk out that door and you walk back into mediocrity. Don’t do it, Lorenzo.” _

_ “I’ll walk back into normalcy. I love this world, Hannibal, I want to make it better. This is my design, not some murder fantasy. And my name isn’t Lorenzo anyway. Goodbye, Hannibal. I’m not wishing you any luck”. _


	11. Partially redacted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And yet… there was something that she really wanted to know after everything had been said and done: how did Lorenzo die? How did Hannibal react?  
> That was merely a personal curiosity, however. Clinically speaking, it didn’t really matter.

Lorenzo (or whatever his name was) disappeared completely in the winter of 1967, the Mostro started to kill in the summer of 1968: all the victims were lovers. To a valid psychiatrist like Bedelia, it was painfully obvious that the murders were Hannibal’s love letter to Lorenzo. He wanted to show him what he had lost, how he could make it beautiful. Half love letters, half hate mail.  C linically speaking, the most interesting thing about the killings was Hannibal’s perseverance and the staggering amount of persistence and efficient brutality he displayed. As for the motives… love is by far the most frequent catalyst for violence.

It was another rainy night in Via del Corno but this time Bedelia didn’t feel especially melancholic: she had gotten used to Italy and its romantic aura had completely disappeared. Like Hannibal’s first love story, most people in life seem a lot more fascinating when you don’t fully know them yet. 

And yet… there was something that she really wanted to know after everything had been said and done: how did Lorenzo die? How did Hannibal react? That was merely a personal curiosity, however. Clinically speaking, it didn’t really matter.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Hannibal had learnt what happened to Lorenzo when he was already acting as a consultant for the FBI, in fact precisely because of that: the CIA had a file about Lorenzo (whose real name, by the way, was Alessandro) and it took him some manipulation and a bit of money to put his hands on it. 

The dossier was partially redacted but it still told Hannibal what he wanted to know: the CIA made contact with Alessandro a couple of years before his mission in Florence, but it was only after he left that he became an actual operative with a code name. He was killed during a mission in Brazil in 1972: he got shot in the face and died on the spot. The killer’s name was redacted.

It was mid afternoon when he finished reading the file but, when he finally closed it and left the room, the sky was dark. Hannibal had spent those hours feverishly fixed on a distant memory: Alessandro was still Lorenzo, he was still a student and both of them were reading in bed. The future was an open road and he felt like the teacup had never shattered.


	12. Laurent B

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The name of Alessandro’s killer was redacted for a very good reason: he never existed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So!!  
> This is the final chapter of the story and i already miss writing it: it really helped me in this boring/unpleasant times.  
> As you can see, Lorenzo/Alessandro survived! This guy really has a strong will to live: i was really intent on killing him but it wasn't meant to be!

Northern France, a few months after the cliff incident

  
  


The name of Alessandro’s killer was redacted for a very good reason: he never existed. Alessandro’s whole dossier was nothing but a game of mirrors. After a series of mishaps, he ended up in France working as a military instructor and consultant under the fake name of Laurent B.

He came across the video of Hannibal and Will’s last dive for business purposes, since apparently intelligence from the whole world was very interested in Graham’s downfall. It was a great case study in how to not handle undercover operations, unstable operatives and difficult cases. Alessandro, however, doesn’t use it much in his lessons. The French, and the Europeans in general, have a wild different approach to this kind of problems, a certain pragmatism and a healthy dose of cynicism that the Americans lack. His superiors would have never hired Will Graham, not even dead. The unruly genius is an annoying and baseless common place and it needs to die soon: that’s one of the focal points of Alessandro’s lessons. You don’t want a genial operative with great improvisation skill and a vivid imagination, those are the ones that get you killed; you want a reasonable person with nerves of steel and a solid training. He doesn’t talk about Will Graham because people like him should be kept away from the frontline, period. 

As for the personal side… well. He doesn’t remember Florence or Hannibal too fondly. It was a depressing time in his life he doesn’t dwell too much on. Thinking about Hannibal would also be useless: only God in his infinite wisdom knows how people like him are made, and why He sends them to the streets is not something a humble consultant could ever explain.

And he had burned that stupid tsantsa anyway.

_ What the fuck was i thinking? _

**Author's Note:**

> Cronache di poveri amanti-Tales of poor lovers is a real book by Vasco Pratolini. It's set during the fascist era and tells the stories of several young couples living in via del Corno. It gets political. It's also quite depressing and i didn't like it.


End file.
